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THE STORY WITHOUT AN END

the cave, but he saw nothing save the pitch-dark night, who had wrapped everything in her thick veil. Yet as he looked upwards his eyes met the friendly glance of two or three stars, and this was a most joyful surprise to him, for he felt himself no longer so entirely alone. The stars were, indeed, far, far away, but yet he knew them, and they knew him, for they looked into his eyes.

The Child’s whole soul was fixed in his gaze, and it seemed to him as if he must needs fly out of the darksome cave thither, where the stars were beaming with such pure and serene light: and he felt how poor and lowly

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